I am a time lord. My store is my T.A.R.D.I.S.
Every store exists in six dimensions.
As an Organised Play store – somewhere where people can come and play games – we exist in the dimension of space. We become inhabited, colonised. We have capacity. If two people play a game of Magic they occupy approximately 4 square feet of table space and at least double that in player space. A game of Warhammer is played on a 6′ x 4′ table. That occupies a whopping 24 square feet of game and 8 square feet of player.
Purely in terms of table space you can fit twelve Magic games in the space occupied by one Warhammer table.
Should Warhammer table hire cost more than Magic tables because they occupy more space?
Now we enter the dimension of money. RoI, our financial return on investment. The smart money has already ripped out those Warhammer tables and put in Magic tables.
But here’s the thing. You can play Magic anywhere. Table 27 of one PTQ was a toilet. Table 26 the shop counter. But Warhammer needs a 6′ x 4′ table, and that’s a much scarcer resource.
Should Warhammer table hire cost more than Magic tables because they are scarcer?
Warhammer tables need scenery. They require upkeep. People occupy them for longer. Warhammer players often play with existing armies and thus buy less. Wow, I’m making a great argument here for increasing the cost of Warhammer table hire aren’t I?
But I don’t charge more. In fact I charge less.
There’s another dimension that I have to deal with as a quantum retailer and that’s time. If you have ever worked in a busy restaurant, you will understand the concept of covers and turn rate. A restaurant might have twenty tables – forty covers – and maximises its income when all those tables are fully occupied with happy smiling diners. And then it turns those covers and replaces all those happy smiling diners with another bunch of happy smiling diners. Let’s say a meal takes two hours and the restaurant is constantly full in that time. Every diner is instantly replaced.
That would be amazing. Those twenty tables have now generated 160 covers.
So in an ideal world all our tables would be constantly occupied with instantly refreshing Magic players for maximum income generation.
That’s how Dan Tibbles – who pioneered the Organised Play model I adapted – ran. He ran his store in direct opposition to the Wizards owned Game Keeper brand, who simply couldn’t keep up with the volume of players and events that Dan fired out. He instantly became Top of Mind in Seattle, Wizards hometown. And the entire chain of Game Keeper stores had closed around the time Fan Boy Three opened.
But there’s literally not enough Magic players in the country to support a store running that much Magic. My OP space seats 128 magic players or 96 D&D players or 32 Warhammer players. If I turned Magic players like a restaurant I’d need to have a community large enough to support three and a half thousand play instances a week.
Wizards would love that!
But it’s not an optimal strategy even if it was achievable. Dan’s store is no longer with us either. At last count I ran about forty different game lines in store, split over seven different nights of the week, sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, sometimes bimonthly or quarterly or even annually. The size of your play community often determines your frequency of events. The size of your play community can be expressed as a function of catchment, which again is about space – your location and the location of people around you.
Both the frequency of events and the length of events are a factor of time. The more competitive they are, the longer they are, the more competitive players they attract from further afield. The wider your catchment. The longer people have traveled, the more they have spent, the more they expect to win, the more expensive the events.
Space, time and money, inextricably linked.
Every store is different, and the interplay is different. My portfolio of events has a diversity of game line, and a diversity of casual versus competitive dynamic. There is a rough price pointing across those bands, so a player knows that if they are attending a £30 event it’s probably going to be more serious than a £3 event. Because what is optimal for The Fat Duck is not optimal for Pizza Hut.
While I *have* space, the space each individual event takes up is irrelevant. When I don’t, it’s extremely relevant. Like the best restaurants I have spare tables and spare chairs. There’s always room for one more – until there isn’t. Because nobody wants to be turned away from the top restaurant in town because they turned up without booking six months in advance. It’s a negative experience and we are all about happiness and positivity.
Emotional, not transactional.
So let’s go back to the restaurant. I’m popping in for a quick bite by myself. There is nobody else in the restaurant. By serving me, in a way, the restaurant is potentially costing themselves money. What if a party of forty turned up in five minutes to maximise their covers? And I was there, sat plum in the middle, eating only a starter and drinking tapwater.
However, if they don’t, I am actually adding value. By occupying space that would otherwise be empty I am acting as a living, breathing, eating endorsement. Nobody wants to set foot in an empty restaurant, let alone eat there. In fact, if you are ever opening a restaurant, it’s a great tactic to recruit family and friends to serve as seat warmers. Bring in your most gregarious friends and anyone walking past will think you are the hottest spot in town.
When we first opened, there was Phil, Mandy and myself and our friend Dave. And we sat in the store every night and played Versus. I thought I had made a terrible mistake. Maybe the world wasn’t ready for an Organised Play store? Manchester was grim. The Northern Quarter was still a haunted transient shell in the evenings.
What had I done?
Then Ben and Alex came in. They had just bought Versus too. With six it looked like it wasn’t an accident that folks were still in the building after six pm. More people came. More games. If you had a table of D&D with a woman playing, you went in the window. Representation is important, and so is advertising that you believe that.
Miniature games fill space like nothing else on earth. They are big. They are bold. They are colourful. And 6′ x 4′ tables are a scarce resource. Nobody wants to eat in an empty restaurant. But a full restaurant remembers the family and friends who got them there. Who filled their tables when they were nothing but hopes and dreams.
Time does not just flow one way. The smaller parcels of time and turn rate and frequency are but stepping stones on the path. The space a table occupies is one part of an equation that takes you from the then to the now and into the future. Over time we engender loyalty, we engender reputation, we engender community. These are all functions of time.
Diversity adds value.
The more diversity you have in terms of table activity and table size, the less of a monoculture you will appear. The more vibrant you will be. And vibrancy is attractive. It adds value, and value ultimately translates to money, even if you cannot perceive it right now. I don’t charge the Warhammer players more because they add value. Everybody – every activity – in my store adds value. But sometimes that value comes at a cost.
I know some stores do not charge for space. Ziferblat the time cafe around the corner from us charges £4 an hour. They are always at capacity. Pizza Hut wants to turn its tables four times a night. The Fat Duck only once. Both are restaurants.
Time. Space. Money. All we ever see is one tiny part of the equation. A slice through the space-time-money continuum. Who knows what the future brings.
Daleks probably.
The Quantum Retailer 